This application is based upon and claims the benefit of priority from the prior Japanese Patent Application No. 2001-032727, filed Feb. 8, 2001, the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a specimen-conveying conveyor for conveying a specimen such as blood.
2. Description of the Related Art
If blood drawn for a blood test is left in a blood-drawing tube, it will be coagulated. In order to prevent this, usually, an anticoagulant is put into the blood-drawing tube in advance and the blood (specimen) is agitated together with the anticoagulant in the tube.
In a prior art means for agitating the blood and the anticoagulant, an operator agitated blood in a blood-drawing tube together with an anticoagulant, using an agitator or by someone""s hand before or after he or she conveyed the tube to a target place. Since the agitation is very complicated and unstable, it is likely to be operated insufficiently. Moreover, operation time to agitate the specimen and anticoagulant has to be secured separately from time to convey the specimen to a target place. Thus, the prior art agitating means had a problem that an operation in a subsequent step could not be started quickly.
An object of the present invention is to provide a specimen-conveying conveyor having the following advantages:
1) Agitation of a specimen and an anticoagulant is not complicated but very simplified. Further, necessary and sufficient agitation can be performed with stability.
2) Any special time for agitation need not be secured and a subsequent operation can be started quickly. The total specimen processing time can thus be shortened.
3) Agitation conditions can be controlled appropriately in accordance with the length of a conveyance path.
In order to attain the above object, the specimen-conveying conveyor according to the present invention has the following characteristic configuration. The other characteristic configurations will be clarified in the Embodiment later.
A specimen-conveying conveyor according to an aspect of the present invention comprises a holding roller mechanism including a roller unit having a plurality of holding rollers, which are arranged in a horizontal direction so as to form a valley region in which a test tube is laid down and held, along a conveyance path, a rotation driving mechanism which simultaneously rotates the holding rollers of the roller unit of the holding roller mechanism in a first direction and thus rotates the test tube laid down and held in the valley region in a second direction opposite to the first direction, and a slide driving mechanism which slides the test tube laid down and held in the valley region in a direction along an axis of each of the holding rollers.
In the foregoing specimen-conveying conveyor, the agitation of a specimen and an anticoagulant due to the rotation of the test tube can automatically be performed in the specimen conveying process. Thus, an operator need not perform a complicated agitating operation artificially but can perform necessary and sufficient agitation with stability. Since the agitation is performed during the conveyance of a specimen, any special time for the agitation need not be secured. The operator can start his or her subsequent operation quickly and shorten the total specimen processing time.
Additional objects and advantages of the invention will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The objects and advantages of the invention may be realized and obtained by means of the instrumentalities and combinations particularly pointed out hereinafter.